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Final Doom The Way id Did will look to create two 32-level PWADs based on TNT: Evilution (Evilution The Way Team TNT Did) and The Plutonia Experiment (Plutonia The Way The Casalis Did).

NOTE: Plutonia and Evilution DO NOT EXIST in "this universe" so do not make a map based off an existing Plutonia or Evilution map. The goal is to emulate the OVERALL BROAD IDEA not the final product. For example: if you want to emulate the idea behind Hunted the broad idea is not 'maze full of archviles' but 'concept map based around a single enemy'

No slots will be reserved (even after the project is "full" there will be a bump period to give maps a chance to get in) and any maps that do not make the final cut will go into an overflow project (this does not mean the maps suck, there are many good maps in DTWID LE/D2TWID LE).

Make observations in the thread so that other people may discuss them and agree/disagree with them.

Emulate the style of the author you picked. Many mappers particularly the Casalis and Tom Mustaine had very particular styles, look at how they used textures, how they used shapes, the general idea behind their layouts, etc...

Make original content not homages*. I am aware that several authors, particularly in Final Doom loved to repeat ideas and frequently rip themselves off, but just like Romero did when he recycled ideas (see all of Doom 2 and E4) they still managed to recycle shit in new ways. Even Tom Mustaine when flat out copying existing rooms from his other levels still slightly changed things up.

Be willing to listen to feedback and rework things as needed, no one is immune from this not even project leaders, if you disagree with something argue the point, but always argue from a subjective standpoint about map intangibles and "feel" not an objective standpoint (sorry, no Plutonia map made entirely out of FIREBLU - mainly because FIREBLU doesn't exist in Plutonia).

The goal of these projects is to emulate the styles of the original authors NOT to simply make a project "kind of like that", that does not mean every map must 100% follow some ironclad guidelines, more so the question should always be when attempting a concept "could the author X have done Y?". There are certain things that are objectively right and objectively wrong (if you submit a Milo map made out jagged triangles and blobs, you're doing it wrong) but beyond that the goal should be to put yourself in the mindset of the author and create something new.

For some odd reason whatever editor they used for TNT and Plutonia had some oddities, like using 5/10 for sector heights and light levels. Now the authors of that era clearly understood that doom's textures were designed around 8/16 and as such beyond Tom Mustaine tried to emulate this (they did not always succeed and as such there are tons of random heights in TNT and Plutonia) the Casalis on the other hand got lazy and would use 5/10 for a lot of stuff so you can find things like 138 high sectors or what not in a lot of their maps, the odd sector heights and light levels do factor into how the map looks so try to emulate what your author used.

Finally and most importantly, Leave it in™! 1996 was not an era of extreme polish, if you make a fuck up that could realistically not be caught by rushed testing in an effort to get id to pay you money? Leave it in™!

PLEASE when submitting maps, do not submit them all as one lump, break them up and submit them as individual wads and tell me who each map is supposed to be in the style of. ("Plutonia" is not a style. Pick Dario or Milo.)

With TNT you have two choices. Either 1. You may attempt to emulate a map in the style of an existing TNT mapper OR someone who either did work with TNT or possibly could have worked with TNT (Jim Flynn, Dr. Sleep, anyone who contributed to the Master Levels). 2. You may attempt to make a map in YOUR OWN style but adjusted to 96 levels (pretend you have a shitty editor that means you can't detail every room or use 3D mode) as TNT has several authors who only ever made one map. You map must look like it could realistically be in TNT if you go this route.

Only four maps are a dead lock. Map 01 must be a Tom Mustaine remake of D2TWID Map 01 (Mustaine loved remaking Map 01 of Doom 2, D2TWID is Doom 2 in this universe, so Mustaine loves remaking Map 01 of that) Maps 31 and 32 must be fun and exciting settings (DO NOT REMAKE CARIBBEAN AND PHARAOH, you're creative people, do something new) bonus points for shitty new textures, Map 30 must be an Icon of Sin map. Beyond that your maps slot can be very malleable. TNT's episodes do not have a very specific hard lock on themes, so as long as you're not making a pure hell map for E1, you're good.

Do not flood the project with Drake O'Brien sized maps. TNT maps are not all massively huge and even the massively huge ones can realistically be beaten at 20 minutes tops.

Do not fear bullshit progression and stupid shit that gets the player lost. This is TNT after all.

Diversify your scale! TNT is a master at this. Big empty as shit rooms, tiny cramped corridors all in the same map? Yes please.

Optional areas! TNT has a bunch of these please do not neglect them. If they are totally pointless optional areas? Even better.

Plutonia is not a slaughter mapset. Plutonia maps rarely break 200 monsters (go look at the monster count for Go 2 It, I'll wait) the gameplay is made difficult by effective monster usage punctuated by a few hordes here and there.

Plutonia is small. Most maps are not that big, often favoring compact tight layouts over massive sprawls. Even the big maps are not that long. This does not mean that big maps have no place, just remember for every Aztec, Tombstone, or Sewers there were 5 Omens, Compounds, NMEs, Congos, Cageds (Cagedes? Cagedi?), etc...

Plutonia is samey. Really samey. EXTREMELY samey. BTSX samey. Dario and Milo really liked using the same textures for the same things across many levels regardless of whether or not it thematically fit where the level was "supposed to be". (If you read the story The Congo is apparently on Io.) They both also liked to use the same type of geometry over and over again, so look for consistent tropes in room shapes between Dario and Milo. Example: Milo loved curves.

Plutonia is rip off city. Dario and Milo loved their homages, that's why I have that asterisk earlier. A ton of content is based off of existing IWAD material, either entire maps being remakes (Slayer, Final Frontier, Caged, Twilight, Anti Christ, Neurosphere) to borrowing concepts (Odyssey of Noises - Downtown : Impossible Mission - Doom E2 : Tombstone : Tom Hall Layouts) to simply ripping off rooms (Congo's rocket launcher room being in E2M2, NME's E2M1 rip off). As Doom and Doom 2 don't exist in this universe, DTWID and D2TWID will be your resources for lazy plagiarism, (I kid, they disguised their rip offs by doing something new with them, you should too). P.S. If you worked on DTWID/D2TWID and are going to be ripping off some of that content, please do so on content you did not work on, as to preserve the "this level as interpreted by the style of someone else" that Plutonia has going on. Yes I am aware you're working on a map in a different style already, but some of the "you" is inevitably going to creep in :P.

Only two maps in Plutonia MUST be something. Map 30 must be a IOS map. Map 32 is going to be called Deal w/ It. Deal with it.

Project Timetable:
When it's done. This is not some "throw it together in 4 months and shove it out the door" project. It will be released when it's done, then checked, then double checked, then argued about, then bitched about, declared a horrible mess of rampant elitism that seeks to destroy the doom community, then argued about some more. (But no seriously, there is no rush so take your time and think about your map, or channel your inner me and make 15 maps in 2 weeks, it really doesn't matter, the project will be released when done. Not "full".)

If you feel like it. Discussion should primarily be kept to the thread, but IRC is nice so that there aren't 5,000 word essays about how much person X is nazi for implying that WOOD5 is used on north facing walls or whatever clogging up the thread.

NOTE: All relevant information, style discussions and whatnot will be linked here for easy access so people don't need to dig through 100 pages of shit. This goal of this project is to be accessible so please constantly check the OP for updates.

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I'm already hoping to make a map in the style of Minadeo (oh Metal my Metal..)

Just a suggestion here to see who might agree/disagree and why, but wouldn't it be a much better idea to split this into two threads? One for Evilution The Way Team TNT Did and the other for Plutonia The Way The Casalis Did?

This is going to run the risk of being a very convoluted messy thread otherwise...

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This is a most excellent development in the land of twid software. I do have one enquiry that I'd like to open up for discussion though, and that's the emulation of Ty Halderman's work in TNT's episodes 1 and 2. Apart from making a single map himself (map04: Wormhole) he collaborated on the completion of 06, 09, 13, 18 and 19 to varying degrees (mostly minimal work - the slapping on of that whole blue area in Mill, for example). In this instance would it perhaps be better for there to one "Ty Halderman guy" who hurriedly edits the shit out of ~5 maps after/near to their completion? Or should mappers be looking to botch in their own Halderman edits to their maps?

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As much as I have interest in this since I edited final doom maps for the psx lost levels project, my skills are still less than adequate to make new maps from scratch (not to mention a lack of motivation) so I will have to pass unfortunately. :(

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One thing however is that Final Doom wasn't exactly done by ID, it was merely approved by them.

ClonedPickle said:

I agree, actually even further still: "TeamTNT" is not an entity in and of itself capable of creating maps, thus the project in production should be titled "Evilution the Way [every author that participated in the project; forgive me for not looking them up right this moment] Did."

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I may throw something together, but I don't have much confidence in emulating the core styles very well.

I recommend that you give it a crack anyway, just be sure that you are willing to keep working on it until it's considered good enough. A good opportunity to improve on your mapping I reckon, particularly with a lot of people willing to give out very detailed and helpful feedbacks. :-)